Kathini Mutisya

WHY PEOPLE DREAM

WHY WE DREAM hey Lydia Kathini here and today we are going to talk about why we dream what's going on inside our brains the scientific study of dreaming is called Anayaology and for most of history it didn't really exist because you can't hold a dream it's difficult to measure a dream you can't taste it you can't see other people's dreams and if you ask them to tell you what they dreamt the results are almost always unreliable infact it's estimated that we forget 95% of the dreams we have especially within the first 10 minutes of having them but then in 1952 something amazing happened researchers at the University of Chicago found this it's a unique type of electrical activity that occurs during a certain stage of a person's sleeping when researchers awoke peole during this stage they almost always reported that they had been dreaming also at the same time during this stage people's eyeballs are going crazy rapidly dartingall over the place underneath their eyelids you can actually see this happening if you watch people sleep like I usually do during REM sleep some pretty bizarre stuff happens if you look at the electrical activity of a brain that is in REM sleep that almost exactly mimics the way the brain acts when it's awake the biggest difference being that the production of chemicals inside the brain like norepinephrine serotonin and histamine is almost completely blocked and that causes the muscles to stop moving which is why you can dream about flying or running around or fighting ninjas but your body doesn't move people who have a disorder achieving complete REM a topia move around in their sleep and act out their dreams they can even get out of bed and sleepwalk oh before you move forward I should say two things one is that it's possible to wake up and not be able to move your body because you're still in rem a topia you're completely conscious and you know that you're awake but your body is not ready to move on the flipside you can also be inside a dream and know that you're dreaming this phenomenon is known as lucid dreaming and it's particularly attractive because while I'm in a lucid dream I can conscious decisions about what I do I can go fly to wherever I want or I can have a tea party with Abraham Lincoln I'm in control but achieving a lucid dream is quite elusive How cast has a great video which I've put in the description that gives some tips and tricks on how to achieve one researchers were able to deprive mice of REM sleep by using this inverted inside a tub of water way up to the tippy top meaning